The Borderlands by Gloria Anzaldua

The Borderlands by Gloria AnzalduaThe text is about a woman who is a victim of her culture. A culture where a female are inferior to the superior males and limits their choices of whatever they want to be in life. This belief pushed them to the lower depths of society with no one to cling to but themselves. Men are always powerful while women are often weak and helpless. This culture press people to follow the rules the conventional way and judge and deprive people of their own freedom to choose. Racist and Deviance are problems that occur and condemned because of the society’s ways. This is why this particular girl wants to break free and do what she wants in her own free will and belief. But the problem is the society. Afraid to be unaccepted and rejected by her family and her culture, she conforms to the values of the culture and masks her dark self in the shadows. And that is her “shadow-beast.” It is her repressed self that contains her true feelings and ambitions about herself and the culture. It’s a part of her where her unacceptable beliefs are kept inside. A part of her that opposes her conscious will and strives to overcome her true self. In other words, she is doing something that pleases the society but she is lying to herself for that is not what she truly felt inside. One day, this beast will resurface within her and that is what she fears the most.

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Gloria Anzaldua’s short essay, Towards a New Consciousness, begins with the description of her mixed culture, a mestiza, and the conflicts she faces in being torn between being Mexican and Native American. Anzaldua expresses her struggle of her torn heritages by describing herself as being caught between two cultures and their values. Instead of being able to love and respect both cultures, Anzaldua feels as if we people feel the need to take up one side of our heritage and end up hating the other part. She paints an image as standing on an opposite side of a riverbank, yelling back and forth answers and questions showing that we eventually end up favoring one side and only getting pieces of the other side of the “river” or other culture. Anzaldua’s aspiration is that somehow we can eventually be on both sides of this riverbank, or even veer off and not choose either side but begin a new river. Anzaldua portrays that we do not have to choose one culture or one belief, because if we do, we will eventually hate ourselves for choosing one side of us that we are ashamed to show. In Anzaldua’s section under “Tolerance for Ambiguity”, she goes on to say that when we, mestizas, feel comfortable with what we know and what we are costumed to believing. When we continue with this one way of thinking and one way of culture, we put up borders or walls that block all of the other wonderful...

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Anzaldua discusses her experiences growing up between many cultures. As a woman of many identities, she has suffered oppression because of whom and what she represents in an American culture that is threatened by anyone who is not of white color. When she talks about the several languages she had to speak to get by these barriers, she encountered most issues with those of Anglos. Anglos were considered the England or English people. Anzaldua states, “On one side of us, we are constantly exposed to the Spanish of the Mexicans, on the other side we hear the Anglos’ [constant] clamoring so that we forget our language (454). She explicated the different ways Spanish people spoke, from standard Spanish to Chicano Spanish (in which consonants were dropped in some words or leave out initial syllables)...

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In Gloria Anzaldua’s book Borderlands La Frontera, The New Mestiza, she shares her experience in a post-colonial world as a Chicana, a lesbian and a woman who grew up in a cross-cultured area trying to understand her identity but also to make us rethink about what a border is and what are the consequences which come with it. Anzaldua creates a “mestiza consciousness” as a dynamic capable of breaking down dualistic ascendant archetypes. This concept is related to “hybridity”, a mixed race, which will be the primary focus in this essay. The significance of being a hybrid in a colonized area of the North America resides in the desire of finding harmony between one’s cultural identity and the conqueror’s model society.
Before the war with the US, California, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas belonged to Mexico. As Anzaldua states, “ separated from mexico, the native Mexican-Texan no longer looked toward Mexico as home, the southwest became our homeland once more” (Anzaldua 29). In this area she lives in, the border, Anzaldua cannot expressly think of herself as Mexican nor can she truly call herself American according to the norms which include language (English) and the skin color (white). What is her identity then? All she knows is that her home is in the Rio Grande Valley.
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...Anzaldua would not really agree with Tan’s goal for her writing. In a society where perfection is practically expected but impossible to achieve, language is one of the many ways that anyone around us can judge us. It is as Tan said, “…the fact that people in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service, pretended not to understand her, or even acted as if they did not hear her. “ Tan even said how her mother’s English ashamed her, that because her mother’s English was limited, it limited her perception of her mother, and that since her words were said imperfectly her mother’s thoughts were imperfect. There are instances every day of people that are not fluent in English, not being treated with the same respect, kindness, and service as their counterparts that are fluent. For some reason, it is embedded in most Americans’ minds that if someone cannot speak English as well as themselves, they are either not intelligent, not worthy of their time, or even not considered to be anywhere near important as someone who can.
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...﻿Heather Hedges
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ENC 1102
24 February 2014
“To Live in the Borderlands Means You”
“To Live in the Borderlands Means You” by GloriaAnzaldua, is a poem talking about women’s mentalities in trying to be in all cultures at once. GloriaAnzaldua writes her poems aiming towards white middle to upper aged women who have defined womanhood by their own personal experiences. The author is focusing on identity and vision from a feminist aspect.
In the first line of the poem, Anzaldua is making a clear statement that women can’t be only one race. Anzaldua says,
“ To live in the borderlands means you are neither hispana india negra espanola ni gabacha, eres mestiza, mulata, half-breed caught in the crossfire between camps while carrying all five races on your back not knowing which side to turn to, run from” (1137)
The author says that you can’t hide the experiences in your past that make you who you are today. The minority of women cannot be banned from any kind of women’s movements, just like women cannot change the races from where they came from. GloriaAnzaldua is showing in this poem that women cannot pick and choose what race they want to be. Every race makes up a section of who they are as a person.
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...The Homeland, Aztlan
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...were denied gender. Women's bodies were regarded as property to be used to satisfy the erotic pleasures of men, who usually raped them. GloriaAnzaldua was oppressed by the white side of the gender system and by her own culture. Colonialism, capitalism and race cannot be separated when looking at the gender system. Chapter two "Movimientos de redeldia y las culturas que traicionan" from Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by GloriaAnzaldua contributed to a queering of race, meaning that the man/woman dichotomy was challenged. The whole gender system was racialized. It showed the relationship between intersectionality. Intersectionality alleged that the classical models of oppression within a society, such as those involving race, gender and sexuality were interrelated based on which indicators were relevant to an individual.
Although gender was significantly marked, it was also hidden. Chapter two "Movimientos de redeldia y las culturas que traicionan" from Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, GloriaAnzaldua showed that women and queers were denied places in society and culture due to oppression. Confusion of sexual identity only made these individuals more at variance with their culture because the change to queer looked at a person's desire and always resisted the man/woman dichotomy (Anzaldua 39). Gloria...